Landrace.Wiki:Contributing

This page describes the main ways to contribute to Landrace.Wiki and the norms that guide all contributions.

If you are completely new to the wiki, read Landrace.Wiki:About first for an overview of the project, then come back here.

Overview

Landrace.Wiki depends on contributions from people with direct knowledge of landrace cannabis: field researchers, growers, preservationists, historians, and members of traditional farming communities. No single team can document global cannabis diversity alone.

There are several ways to contribute, ranging from quick edits to substantial field documentation. Pick whichever fits your knowledge and experience.

1. Document accessions and fields

This is the most valuable type of contribution. If you have real field data, seeds, or long-term observations of a landrace population, you can add it to the database.

What you need:

A location (at minimum the country, region, and growing area; GPS coordinates if possible)
A collection date or observation period
Basic context: who grows it, what it is used for, what it looks like
Photographs if you have them

How to do it:

Use the accession form linked from relevant field or region pages when available.
Fill out all Tier 1 fields if you can. See Help:Accessions for details on what each field means and what counts as Tier 1 versus Tier 2 documentation.
Link each accession to its field, appellation, and growing region. If those pages do not exist yet, you can create them or leave the links red and someone else will fill them in.
See Help:Regions and fields for guidance on creating and maintaining region, area, appellation, and field pages.

Coordinate safety: If exact GPS coordinates could put growers at risk, round to ±500m or provide only the village/area name. See the safety section below.

2. Submit grow and smoke reports

If you have grown a landrace variety or can describe its characteristics from direct experience:

Grow reports document cultivation experience: growing conditions, flowering time, plant structure, yield, any notable traits or difficulties.
Smoke reports document the characteristics and effects of landrace varieties you have encountered.

These reports are community contributions, not formal documentation. They appear on accession pages alongside the verified field data, clearly labelled as community content. Use the submission forms linked from the respective pages.

3. Improve existing pages

You do not need field data to contribute. Many pages need:

Copyediting – Fixing typos, improving clarity, cleaning up formatting
References – Adding citations for claims that currently lack sources, or replacing weak sources with stronger ones
Context – Expanding thin sections with historical, cultural, or botanical information you can source
Links – Connecting related pages that should cross-reference each other (accessions to fields, fields to growing areas, country pages to relevant accessions)

To edit a page, click the Edit tab at the top or the edit link next to a section heading. Write a short edit summary explaining what you changed, then click Save. If you are unfamiliar with wiki markup, see Help:Editing basics.

You can practice safely in Help:Sandbox or in your own personal sandbox at Special:MyPage/sandbox.

4. Add translations and local names

Traditional cannabis varieties have names in dozens of languages, many of them undocumented in English-language sources. If you know local names, traditional nomenclature, or regional terminology:

Add them to the relevant accession, appellation, or region pages
Include the original script where possible, with romanisation
Note the source (published reference, oral tradition, personal knowledge)

5. Report threats

If you are aware of eradication campaigns, habitat destruction, genetic contamination, or other threats to landrace populations:

Submit a news item through the news form for the Current Events feed
Include a source link (news article, government announcement, social media post) if one exists
Provide as much geographic detail as is safe to share

6. Technical contributions

If you are comfortable with MediaWiki, Semantic MediaWiki, Lua, CSS, or data modelling:

Template development and maintenance
Semantic property and query work
Module development (Scribunto/Lua)
CSS and design improvements
Bot scripting for data import or maintenance

See Landrace.Wiki:MediaWiki for an overview of the technical stack. Get in touch through the Zomia Collective if you want to help with infrastructure.

Norms and expectations

All contributions are subject to norms on scope, tone, evidence standards, safety, and editorial review. Before contributing, read Norms and expectations in full. The key points:

Stay within scope: traditional landrace varieties and their documentation. No commercial hybrids, medical advice, or product promotion.
Write factually. Distinguish between direct observation, oral history, and published sources. Reference concrete claims.
Protect people. Use aliases for farmers, round GPS coordinates by ±500m in prohibition countries, strip EXIF metadata from sensitive photographs.
Respect other contributors. Discuss significant changes on the talk page before making them.

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About Landrace.Wiki	About · Mission statement · How Landrace.Wiki works · Glossary
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Introductions to contributing	Contributing overview · Editing basics · Accessions help · Regions & fields · Sandbox
Norms and guidelines	Norms & expectations · Mission · Sourcing and citations · Media & safety
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